Which is the most silent Nikon?

fstop · Oct 12, 2011

MDR said:
A well maintained Nikon FA is pretty quiet at least quieter than my Nikon F, Nikkormat FTN & EL

Dominik

Not in my experience and I have 4 FAs,Fs and F2s to compare. The FA shutter sounds like it will wake up the dead compared to any other camera.The quietest Nikon shutter I've heard in on their DSLRs.

darinwc · Oct 14, 2011

Actually now that you mention it, My Nikon F is the quietest of my nikons.
In fact it is completely silent.

It sits on the shelf all day without making a noise.

Rol_Lei Nut · Oct 14, 2011

darinwc said:
Actually now that you mention it, My Nikon F is the quietest of my nikons.
In fact it is completely silent.

It sits on the shelf all day without making a noise.

Looked at that way, my Nikons are my quietest cameras while my Leicas and Rolleiflexes are extremely loud!

waynecrider · Oct 14, 2011

It's hard to say with never having owned many of the Nikon's, but I was very surprised by the quietness of my N80 when I got it. I would say my M3 has it by a small margin.

fstop · Oct 14, 2011

darinwc said:
Actually now that you mention it, My Nikon F is the quietest of my nikons.
In fact it is completely silent.

It sits on the shelf all day without making a noise.

Thats the beauty of cameras vs women, cameras know when to open up and when to shut up.

Mark Crabtree · Oct 16, 2011

waynecrider said:
It's hard to say with never having owned many of the Nikon's, but I was very surprised by the quietness of my N80 when I got it. I would say my M3 has it by a small margin.

Here's a side by side comparison.
Dead Link Removed

I happened to have access to several of the contenders this weekend, so made this short comparison audio clip. All had normalish lenses mounted.

Cameras used:
Nkon F3 w/MD4
F3
F
F80 (sold in US as N80)

and a couple non-Nikons for comparison
Leica M2
Rolleiflex Automat

If you have Audacity (a free audio program), it is interesting to see the differences graphically as they appear in the file.

Austinite · Oct 16, 2011

The Nikon F (N)80 is the quietest Nikon of them all IMO. Sure it's not a classic Nikon or built like a modern pro SLR but it's the only SLR I've ever used that is near rangefinder quiet.

Mark Crabtree · Oct 16, 2011

Austinite said:
The Nikon F (N)80 is the quietest Nikon of them all IMO. Sure it's not a classic Nikon or built like a modern pro SLR but it's the only SLR I've ever used that is near rangefinder quiet.

I was surprised by how quiet the F80 is. I tried a couple other Nikons when I made the audio clip I linked to in my post Dead Link Removed, but neither was quieter than the F so I didn't include them (N6006-about like F3; FG-20 was kind of clacky, but not excessively loud).

I still like the sound of the F, and of the cameras I tried, only the F3 with MD4 motor was all that noisy. I had to record fairly close up in a quiet room to even hear the F80, Leica, or Rollei.

John_Nikon_F · Oct 18, 2011

Of the four Nikons listed in my signature, you'd need to swap the F and the F2 to get them in order from quietest to loudest.

The F4's shutter itself is very quiet. It's just the rest of the camera that makes it noticeable. To test what I just said, put an F4 on "T". Fire the shutter. Turn off the camera, then move the shutter speed dial off "T". You can barely hear the click of the shutter closing. Or, put some weak batteries into the MB-21, etc, and use the camera until it will take one shot, then lose all battery power. The mirror box is slightly quieter than the F's mirror box. I just wish that Nikon hadn't used winding motors that sound like someone sneezing.

The F is pretty quiet with a distinct click when fired. A little quieter when the mirror's locked up, but not by much. Add an F-36, and it becomes much like a motor driven F2, noise level-wise.

The F2: a bit louder than the other two cameras, but still sounds pretty nice and smooth. With a MD-1 or an early MD-2, it sounds much like a motor driven F. Pretty much identical, actually. That said, get a later MD-2 or an MD-3 with stripped gears, and you'll think that the AFLAC duck is following you around.

The F3 sounds a bit like an F2, except for a bit of a clang when the mirror box operates. Not unlike the difference between a Nikkormat FT series body and an EL (or early FM/FE series camera).

F5 is loud, except in Cs mode, when the actual shutter and mirror box combo sounds just like an F3.

FM2n, FE2, FA, and FM3a: Noisy bastards. *CLACK!* Sounds like a deer rifle going off next to your ear.

FG, FG-20, and EM: As they've aged, their mirror boxes have begun to sound like Canon A-series cameras. *squeak*

My experience with the Nikon S2 is that it sounds much like an F, with the mirror locked up. Mainly because the shutter's the same design, just with cloth curtains.

-J

DaveO · Oct 20, 2011

most quiet nikon

The most quiet Nikon is the one with a broken shutter!

DaveO

montecarlo · Oct 21, 2011

waynecrider said:
It's hard to say with never having owned many of the Nikon's, but I was very surprised by the quietness of my N80 when I got it. I would say my M3 has it by a small margin.

I don't know about the M6 but yes, the F80/N80 is one of the quietest slr i've used. More, the camera ist'n much bigger or heavier than a M6

BradleyK · Oct 21, 2011

darinwc said:
Actually now that you mention it, My Nikon F is the quietest of my nikons.
In fact it is completely silent.

It sits on the shelf all day without making a noise.

Really? My F, F2AS (the first one I purchased in 1979) and my first F3 (purchased in the spring of 1981) are equally silent - blindfolded, I do not believe I could tell them apart. All three bodies were permanently retired at the end of December 2010. Each body - having only ever only been used to shoot Kodachrome - was retired, never to be debased with a lesser color transparency film. The cameras, with their respective backs displaying the tab ends from their last rolls of film (PKM, PKR, KR (1563), sit silent as part of my Kodachrome Shrine...

fstop · Oct 21, 2011

BradleyK said:
Really? My F, F2AS (the first one I purchased in 1979) and my first F3 (purchased in the spring of 1981) are equally silent - blindfolded, I do not believe I could tell them apart. All three bodies were permanently retired at the end of December 2010. Each body - having only ever only been used to shoot Kodachrome - was retired, never to be debased with a lesser color transparency film. The cameras, with their respective backs displaying the tab ends from their last rolls of film (PKM, PKR, KR (1563), sit silent as part of my Kodachrome Shrine...

hmmm, interesting. Wonder what Freud would say, maybe "sometimes a camera is just a camera"

In a 100 years the collection will be worth about as much as it is today.Which to be honest is not much.

BradleyK · Oct 21, 2011

fstop said:
hmmm, interesting. Wonder what Freud would say, maybe "sometimes a camera is just a camera"

In a 100 years the collection will be worth about as much as it is today.Which to be honest is not much.

How do you attach a numerical value to sentiment?

semi-ambivalent · Oct 21, 2011

BradleyK said:
Really? My F, F2AS (the first one I purchased in 1979) and my first F3 (purchased in the spring of 1981) are equally silent - blindfolded, I do not believe I could tell them apart. All three bodies were permanently retired at the end of December 2010. Each body - having only ever only been used to shoot Kodachrome - was retired, never to be debased with a lesser color transparency film. The cameras, with their respective backs displaying the tab ends from their last rolls of film (PKM, PKR, KR (1563), sit silent as part of my Kodachrome Shrine...

Shrine? I don't know if you're kidding here or not, and I'm not here to judge anybody, but I could imagine that for every Kodak engineer who might read this and think ' Good gosh it was just a film, move on already' there's another Kodak engineer who stands a little taller. And maybe even a few who think 'damn straight'.

s-a

Ronald Moravec · Oct 23, 2011

Quiet would be a leaf shutter rangefinder. Next comes a M series film leica.

My F2 sounds like a canon going off. Nikormat is pretty noisy. FE2 still is not anywhere near quiet.

fstop · Oct 23, 2011

BradleyK said:
How do you attach a numerical value to sentiment?

Insurance companies do it everyday.If you want to deny yourself the pleasure of using good film cameras thats your prerogative.

BradleyK · Oct 23, 2011

fstop said:
Insurance companies do it everyday.If you want to deny yourself the pleasure of using good film cameras thats your prerogative.

No argument on these Nikons being great cameras. However, given that I continue to shoot 35mm with 2-F2 (DE-1 finders) bodies, 2-F2AS bodies, an F2A, an F3 and an F3HP (the F2s all equipped with the MD2/MB1 drives; the F3 with the MD4 drives) as well as a pair of M6s, the notion of "deprivation" does not really enter into it!
Perhaps referring to my collection of Kodachrome memorabilia was misleading; I just thought it kind of cool to set aside the bodies I had used on my final Kodachrome shoot on Christmas Day, 2010. I have, of course, moved on. But Kodachrome will always have a special place in my heart; I started shooting the film when I was nine years old with my first camera, a cheap-ass 126 format creation. It remained, until last year, the only 35mm color film I have ever shot. While I have moved on to E100G and E100VS, in both 35mm and 21/4, something in my mind is missing. Perhaps it is the realization that the images I create now come with a "best-before" date. Perhaps it is the quality of the color itself. Nonetheless, a certain resonance, if you will, has been lost. Shooting Kodachrome and then switching to Ektachrome is sort of like being forced to give up my Beemer or my Honda and being told to satisfied with driving a Ford...

Jeff Kubach · Oct 23, 2011

The quietest camera I have is the one is not working, other than that I ain't going to worry about it!

Jeff

fstop · Oct 23, 2011

BradleyK said:
No argument on these Nikons being great cameras. However, given that I continue to shoot 35mm with 2-F2 (DE-1 finders) bodies, 2-F2AS bodies, an F2A, an F3 and an F3HP (the F2s all equipped with the MD2/MB1 drives; the F3 with the MD4 drives) as well as a pair of M6s, the notion of "deprivation" does not really enter into it!
Perhaps referring to my collection of Kodachrome memorabilia was misleading; I just thought it kind of cool to set aside the bodies I had used on my final Kodachrome shoot on Christmas Day, 2010. I have, of course, moved on. But Kodachrome will always have a special place in my heart; I started shooting the film when I was nine years old with my first camera, a cheap-ass 126 format creation. It remained, until last year, the only 35mm color film I have ever shot. While I have moved on to E100G and E100VS, in both 35mm and 21/4, something in my mind is missing. Perhaps it is the realization that the images I create now come with a "best-before" date. Perhaps it is the quality of the color itself. Nonetheless, a certain resonance, if you will, has been lost. Shooting Kodachrome and then switching to Ektachrome is sort of like being forced to give up my Beemer or my Honda and being told to satisfied with driving a Ford...

You didn't mention you had other cameras to use. BTW I'll take my SVT over a bulgarian meat wagon any day of the week.

BradleyK · Oct 25, 2011

fstop said:
You didn't mention you had other cameras to use. BTW I'll take my SVT over a bulgarian meat wagon any day of the week.

Actually, calling a 335i coupe - having only two doors as coupes do - a wagon is an obvious error in typology. As well, mistaking a Bavarian for a Bulgarian is about as accurate as referring to an American as an Argentinian. I will give Ford? credit for being the only one of the shrinking three that did not need its sorry self bailed out by the federal governments of the US and Canada as well as the taxpayers of the State of Michigan and the Province of Ontario. That said, I remain deeply suspicious of any car company that has to engage in de facto bribery to convince consumers to buy its cars!

kivis · Oct 27, 2011

Nikon F hands down.

DaveO · Oct 29, 2011

The most silent Nikon is the one with the broken shutter!

DaveO

fstop · Oct 29, 2011

or the one that was
shot and drowned
in long island sound

dtmateojr · Nov 10, 2011

My black FM3A serial 28xxxxx is quiet. The mirror seems to be dampened a lot compared to my other FM3A serial 22xxxxx and FE2. At first I even thought the shutter was broken.

Which is the most silent Nikon?

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